4 ms·

How do you get the idea of isolating 100 people in a lab, half with only white rice, and half with rice and barley? You could try hundreds other kind of experim

by Xixi 12y ago

How do you get the idea of isolating 100 people in a lab, half with only white rice, and half with rice and barley? You could try hundreds other kind of experiment, so why this one in particular? Specially if you think the cause is bacterial/viral in nature... This is were epidemiology gets very useful: you look at data for correlations, and from there you can design experiments to check for causation.

sopooneo 12y ago
I think what you say makes perfect sense. And I agree completely with the question of "how do you decide what to test?" But in that respect, are the two approaches outlined in the article really at odds with one another? Would it have contradicted the "German" approach to use epidemiology to lead you towards hypothesis? My main point is that it seems the real problem wasn't so much one approach over another, as one side having an unjustified commitment to bacteria/virus as a root cause.
- tim333 12y ago
  The "German" approach could have got there in the end but slowly and with huge costs while a bit of common sense could have been quicker, cheaper and saved lives. It reminds me a bit of the obesity epidemic in the US which is probably down to too much consumption of sugary stuff but where the medical establishment only wants to look at FDA style lab studies which you can't actually do - you can't bring up a bunch of kids in a lab, one on sugary stuff, one on a more traditional diet. So millions die unpleasantly of something not much harder to fix than fixing beriberi by putting barley in the diet. At least not much harder to fix from a science point of view. Quite hard economically and politically as there are massive financial interests in pushing sugary junk on kids. I guess that's a bit like the situation in the article where politics were in play.

4 ms·

How do you get the idea of isolating 100 people in a lab, half with only white rice, and half with rice and barley? You could try hundreds other kind of experim

by Xixi 12y ago

sopooneo 12y ago
I think what you say makes perfect sense. And I agree completely with the question of "how do you decide what to test?" But in that respect, are the two approaches outlined in the article really at odds with one another? Would it have contradicted the "German" approach to use epidemiology to lead you towards hypothesis? My main point is that it seems the real problem wasn't so much one approach over another, as one side having an unjustified commitment to bacteria/virus as a root cause.
- tim333 12y ago
  The "German" approach could have got there in the end but slowly and with huge costs while a bit of common sense could have been quicker, cheaper and saved lives. It reminds me a bit of the obesity epidemic in the US which is probably down to too much consumption of sugary stuff but where the medical establishment only wants to look at FDA style lab studies which you can't actually do - you can't bring up a bunch of kids in a lab, one on sugary stuff, one on a more traditional diet. So millions die unpleasantly of something not much harder to fix than fixing beriberi by putting barley in the diet. At least not much harder to fix from a science point of view. Quite hard economically and politically as there are massive financial interests in pushing sugary junk on kids. I guess that's a bit like the situation in the article where politics were in play.